Author Archives: becca

What Is Campfire In Pokémon GO, And Do I Need It?

Campfire very quietly started rolling out last week, and I noticed it when I saw a rather peculiar grey icon in-app near my Daily Adventure Incense.

I tapped on it. I was met with a black loading bar that didn’t seem to do anything, so I left my phone where it was for a couple of minutes. Then, when I looked at it again, I had a map displayed on my screen with PokéStops and Gyms laid out. So?

What Is Campfire?

Campfire is essentially a way for Pokémon GO players to socialize with their local community. It’s not just a social app, though. Right now, it’s most beneficial use is to help you find nearby players to fight Raids with you. Especially when primal raids like Kyogre and Groudon occur, it’s important that you have enough Trainers in your battle group to ensure Raid Boss defeat.

Should I Download Campfire?

If you’re looking to link up with other Trainers locally, Campfire is a great way to find nearby Trainer-hosted events that you can join. Additionally, the social aspect is great to keep all of your Pokémon GO communications in one place.

Personally, I haven’t downloaded Campfire yet—I have friends I see regularly who already play, so we’re typically able to play as we’d like without yearning for new friends. But, it might be useful for at least one of your friends to take one for the team, so that when your core group needs the extra help for a raid, they can light a Flare.

Campfire links up with other Niantic apps as well, so if you have more than just Pokémon GO, it might be worthwhile.

But for now, I’m okay just being able to see the nearby Flares within Pokémon GO, without needing all of the other features the full app has to offer.

Process Post 12: Community Guidelines

I don’t have comments enabled for most of my blog posts.

At first, it was because the first few posts I created weren’t aimed at receiving commentary—they were just to set up the premise of my blog. I have two thoughts about this now:

  1. If I open up comments on my blog posts, this blog space can become an active community space where I interact with my audience.
  2. If I don’t open comments on my blog posts, this blog will serve as an informational hub, but to connect with my audience, I definitely should have other platforms where there is open communication.

With the latter thought in mind, my post last week on how I might incorporate transmedia storytelling seems like the most ideal situation for my audience. However, in “The Psychology of Online Comments,” Maria Konnikova states that moving from a single blog post to larger environments on social media “often produce less than desirable effects, including a diffusion of responsibility: you feel less accountable for your own actions, and become more likely to engage in amoral behavior” (Konnikova, 2013).

It’s an assumption, but I don’t think Pokémon GO players spend all of their time commenting on blogs—they probably come here for what they need and take off to where they normally spend their time online, so it’s possible that turning off blog comments isn’t the sole cause of such “amoral behaviour” on a broader social platform.

The thought of opening up to commentary in a community I’m technically responsible for is quite daunting, and feels different than if I’m a business responding to potential customers. WordPress has the ability to let you approve comments before they are shown under a blog post, and most social media platforms have comment filtering functions to ensure that certain words and phrases you won’t allow will not show in your comment section. However, limiting comments too intensively can also negatively affect the comment section. As mentioned in the article, removing comments can lower your audience’s willingness to engage with your content, which will affect whether they share it with others (Konnikova, 2013).

With all of this in mind, I’ve come up with short list of community guidelines for my blog:

  • Is it respectful? Even if you disagree with somebody, they should be treated with respect. Avoid using derogatory language and dishing out personal attacks.
  • Absolutely no hate speech allowed. This is a community where everybody is welcome, so discrimination, hatred, and violence against individuals or groups of people for any reason is not tolerated.
  • Are you trolling? Please do not post comments with the sole purpose of provoking others in the community.
  • Do not promote your own products or services, or post irrelevant links.
  • Please have fun! This is an open environment where fellow Pokémon GO Trainers should feel safe to interact with each other, no matter how little or often they play.

Konnikova, M. (2013, October 23). The Psychology of Online Comments. The New Yorker. Retrieved April 11, 2023, from https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-psychology-of-online-comments

New Remote Raid Pass Prices And Daily Limit

Changes Coming On April 6, 2023

The Pokémon GO Team recently released an update detailing changes to Remote Raid Pass prices and limited the number of Remote Raids that Trainers could do per day.

Trainers were already aware of this prior to the announcement through leaks posted by @poke_miners on Twitter, where the in-game text was updated.

Other leaks suggested that Remote Raid Passes would cost 150 PokéCoins each, which is less than the official cost.

Officially, on April 6, 2023, at 11:00AM Pacific Daylight Time:

  • Each Remote Raid Pass will cost 195 PokéCoins instead of 100 PokéCoins
  • A 3-pack of Remote Raid Passes will cost 525 PokéCoins instead of 300 PokéCoins
  • Trainers will be capped at 5 Remote Raids per day, which may increase during special events in-game
  • Remote Raid Passes have a chance of being rewarded through Research Breakthroughs, but we don’t know how high the chances are
Who’s Affected?

Remote Raid Passes were introduced during the pandemic in 2020 so that Trainers could continue to participate in raids while adhering to public safety guidelines where they lived. At the time, Trainers received 1 remote pass each week, and it allowed them to play from anywhere, including with friends across the globe.

The introduction of Remote Raid Passes came with many benefits. Friends would not all have to gather at the same place to participate in raids together, which meant that they could receive friend bonuses from raids even if they battled from different countries. Additionally, those who lived in rural areas were able to access raids more easily if they were invited to one by a Trainer in a larger city. This allows Trainers who have all sorts of living environments to enjoy the game as wholly as they can.

Especially with the rollout of the Campfire app, the reality of the gameplay experience from Trainers living in rural areas becomes all the more apparent.

It’s Just My Opinion

Maybe I’m too casual of a Trainer, but I don’t see a huge caveat in limiting Remote Raids to 6 per day. Typically, I’ll do one raid with my free raid pass, or up to 3 if I’m really wanting the Pokémon that are up for raids at the moment.

However, for rural Trainers, they see a 95% increase in single Remote Raid Pass prices, and a 75% increase in 3-pack Remote Raid Pass prices. Add a daily participant limit to that, and it just feels like Niantic siphons more money out of you as a dedicated player while limiting your gameplay.

I feel like it would be better if it was just one or the other—increase prices or limit the number of Remote Raids. If Niantic only raises prices without limiting the number of Remote Raids you can participate in, then Trainers experience a tradeoff from being able to participate from anywhere—it’s like paying a premium for convenience. If Niantic only limits the number of Remote Raids you can participate in without raising the pass prices, then Trainers don’t experience less value for financial loss, because the amount they spend is capped. When it’s both, the argument that Remote Raids are affecting the intended gameplay experience is lost on me, because it feels more like your gameplay has its limits while they reap financial benefits.

Of course, I don’t know if this really provides more financial benefit to the game developers in the grand scheme of all their monetization avenues, but I do feel that a particular demographic of Trainers become blindsided with this change. I hope this isn’t the start of Remote Raid Passes becoming obsolete, since I think they offer a way to continue playing with your friends, no matter the distance.

Process Post 11: Transmedia Storytelling

Does it make sense to integrate transmedia storytelling for Spinning with Stufful?

When reading “Pokemon as Transmedia Storytelling,” I found it interesting to observe how the world of Pokémon extended past an animated series and became a massive franchise, complete with card games, handheld games, and mobile games. With Pokémon Sleep set to launch this summer, and my current Pokémon GO antics, the show I used to watch as a child is truly beginning to merge effortlessly into my everyday life.

When I try to draw parallels to my blog, and how transmedia storytelling could be integrated to that sort of effect, I can only really think about repurposing content onto different social media platforms. Henry Jenkins explains in “Transmedia Storytelling 101” that in transmedia storytelling, “there is no one single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all of the information needed to comprehend [the universe]” (Jenkins, 2007). That means that my audience might come to my blog for one type of content, and related additional content might be on my TikTok page, and so forth.

In that sense, I could see this happening in very subtle ways. While I haven’t taken care at all to post on my Twitter account, my audience could receive bits and pieces of my everyday gameplay as it happens through there, instead of waiting for me to write a lengthy blog post. That would be one realistic and easy way to stay connected with my audience while giving them a glimpse of the person behind the blog. Additionally, TikTok could be another reasonable place to incorporate transmedia, since games are a visual experience. Content from the blog can be previewed to reach a broader audience, and TikTok is an entirely different medium that opens up opportunities for short-form, bite-sized content that isn’t suitable for Twitter.

References

Jenkins, H. (2007, March 21). Transmedia Storytelling 101. Henry Jenkins. Retrieved April 3, 2023, from http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html

Peer Review 3: The Fashion Daily

The Fashion Daily is run by Megan, who passionately creates content about finding her personal style, curating a wardrobe, and being inspired by recent events in the fashion industry. On her About page, she expresses hope that The Fashion Daily becomes a place where readers might be interested or find out new things in fashion.

Assumed Audience

After combing through her content and About page, I made the assumption that Megan’s intended audience members include both fashion newbies who might be interested in finding their personal style and fashion hobbyists who enjoy staying up-to-date on the world of fashion. This assumption is founded on the type of content she has put out, as well as what I have found that she hopes her blog space will serve as.

Content & Design

The Fashion Daily has 4 main content categories: Weekly Inspiration, Exploring Style, What’s New?, and Just For Fun. The first three categories are centred around a mix of personal style inspiration and tips, while the last category allows Megan to express other interests in her life.

Through her blog posts, I find a sense of care and enthusiasm in the tone of voice. For example, in the post “Enhancing Your Eye Color Through Clothing Choices,” Megan is both encouraging and informative by providing a personal anecdote surrounding her curiosity of which colours wear well on her, before outlining the conventionally best-suited colours by eye colour. By starting with a personal experience, she is also able to transition to informative content by framing eye colour as a fun way to experiment, instead of making it seem like necessary rules to follow.

In “How to Survive the Digital Apocalypse,” it is mentioned that blogs are maintained by businesses to sell ads instead of providing real, genuine value to consumers (Gertz, 2015). I think that the written content reflected on the blog, as well as Megan’s Just For Fun category, bring her personality into The Fashion Daily, which makes the content she publishes feel genuine. As well, she only links out to other websites to provide further reading on the topic she is focused on, rather than trying to sell particular products or services.

In terms of the website’s visual design choices, the colourful images used throughout add pops of colour to what otherwise would be a bland website. Additionally, I like how the serif typeface used for headings and the website title make me think of newspapers, which might be why the blog is named as is: The Fashion Daily might come across as a source of fashion news and information by name alone. To juxtapose this, I think the rounded sans-serif typeface matches the tone Megan chooses to write in, which overall creates a welcoming feeling across the blog for her audience.

I think the tone of voice used, as well as style experimentation tips, are the strongest variables in capturing the attention of Megan’s assumed audience. I believe these factors, in combination with the website’s visual design choices, are what can build trust with her audience and make her blog a safe, encouraging space to go to when one’s spark is set off to experiment with style.

References

Gertz, T. (2015, July 10). How to Survive the Digital Apocalypse. Louder Than Ten. Retrieved March 27, 2023, from https://louderthanten.com/coax/design-machines

Pokémon Types: Easy Ways To Remember Which Types Are Effective Against Others

Every Pokémon is assigned at least one type, which represent the attack moves they can effect against other Pokémon in battle. Each type will have its own strengths and weaknesses, and personally, I’m only able to remember so many of them, especially in time-sensitive situations, like swapping out my Pokémon to have the upper hand mid-battle.

So, I’ve compiled a list of memorization methods that I’ve learned to best keep track of type effectiveness without needing to pull up a chart. This might not cover every single Pokémon type, but it should cover enough ground to make most of your battling knowledge more effective.

Psychics Are Weak Against Common Fears

Correlation is causation. Fear plagues the mind, so for Psychic types, where the mind is central to their abilities, common fears like Bugs, Ghosts, and the Dark will be most effective against them.

Normies Can’t Fight

Think about it this way: if you live a normal, unbothered life, when faced with fight-or-flight, would you be able to fend off against a skilled fighter? Fighting types are most effective against Normal type Pokémon.

Water Breaks Down

The obvious one is Water putting out Fire. Water also erodes Rock, and affects crops by over-saturating the Ground.

Water Gets Controlled

Electric currents amplify using Water as the medium, and plants like Grass absorb water to grow. So, Water types would be weakest against these two types.

You Can’t Fight What You Can’t Touch

Fighting types can’t fly, so their attacks would not reach Flying types. Fighting types have their concentration compromised when it comes to cute and charming Fairy types and mind-puzzling Psychic types.

Fire Gets Smothered

To put out a fire, you need to smother its flame. Effectively, Water, Rocks, and Ground elements like dirt will do the job.

Steel Causes The Most Damage

Literally the hardest. Steel will break Ice, and generally, would break most Rocks.

Steel is also effective against Fairy types, and you’d have to know ancient lore to rationalize this: fairies cannot come in contact with metals like iron, because they will burn.

The Elements Affect Flight

If your plane flight is delayed, it’s usually because there’s a storm. So, Electric and Ice types are particularly effective.

That’s all I’ve got for now! How do you best remember Pokémon type effectiveness?

Process Post 10: Revisiting Accessibility

As the final weeks of the course are coming to a close, I wanted to revisit accessibility to ensure that I covered as many bases that I could on my blog.

So far, I’ve installed the AccessibleWP plugin by codenroll on my blog, which covers the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) principles of “perceivable” and “operable” outlined by the Accessible Publishing Learning Network. It does this by ensuring that vision- and hearing-affected visitors to my website are able to interpret it using their assistive devices or by using keyboard navigation. In particular, there are functions in this plugin that makes links stand out by highlighting them on the page. I also made sure that my links were clear by having them underlined, so that links are perceivable by the user or that there is an interaction available where they are.

Additionally, while the font size on my site is set to size 16, 2 sizes larger than the recommendation of 14 by APLN, the theme I am using scales the text size when responding to different screen sizes, which I haven’t figured out how to control. Thankfully, AccessibleWP covers this with their “Increase Text” function, which allows me to set a scale to increase the text size to for ease of reading.

There was a great point made in APLN’s Introduction to Website Accessibility article, which mentioned that those who use screen readers can opt to hear a list of all the links on my website. I realized that on my homepage, there are two major navigational links that actually don’t describe very much when taken out of context: one that says “More” which leads to my about page, and one that says “More adventures” which leads to my main blog posts in a category I call “Adventure Log”. I’ve now renamed those links to “How it all began” and “Full adventure log” in order to make it more perceivable what kind of content will be found when entering those links.

Currently, I’m a bit behind on adding alt-text to all of my images, but revisiting this article reminded me of an article I read at some point that mentioned that even decorative images, like my site logo, could benefit from a brief description—but that they must be brief, so that those who use alt-text can understand quickly what content is useful to them.

Read This Before You Purify Your Shadow Pokémon

If you’ve come across Team GO Rocket in-game, you’ll have encountered Shadow Pokémon. If you’ve defeated a Grunt or a Team GO Rocket Leader, you’ve had the opportunity to capture a Shadow Pokémon. Once you’ve captured them, you have the opportunity to purify them—or not.

So should you? Let’s go over your options.

What Are Shadow Pokémon?

Shadow Pokémon visually have a dark aura surrounding them, presented as black and purple flame-like wisps emitting from their bodies. You’ll find them when you encounter Team GO Rocket, and have the opportunity to capture one when they are abandoned by a Team GO Rocket member after you defeat them in battle.

Shadow Pokémon have a charged attack called Frustration, and each of their attacks come with a Shadow Bonus, which deals extra damage, just like the Weather Bonus effect that wild Pokémon captured during specific weather conditions have.

Situations To Consider Purifying Shadow Pokémon

In Pokémon GO, there currently aren’t any big tradeoffs in purifying Shadow Pokémon. However, if you care about the resources you have, here are some of the benefits:

  1. High Potential for Full IV: From personal experience, I only find it effective to purify Shadow Pokémon if their IV (individual values) appraisal is close to 3 stars. IV is important when considering how strong your Pokémon will perform in battle, and purifying a Shadow Pokémon in their near-3 star state has the potential to raise their IV stats.
  2. Ease of Powering Up: When Shadow Pokémon are purified, you spend less Stardust and Candy to increase its Combat Power, making for more effective use of your resources to strengthen that Pokémon.
  3. Unlock Charged Attack Return: Every purified Shadow Pokémon learns the charged attack Return, which charges up very quickly and can be useful to deal more damage quicker in battle.
So…Should I Purify My Shadow Pokémon?

The short answer: it depends on the resources you have available.

If you don’t have a lot of Stardust or Candy for that Pokémon, maybe it’s not worth purifying right at this moment. Additionally, if its IVs aren’t that high, maybe you’re better off transferring it to Professor Willow in exchange for Candy rather than purifying it.

However, if the IVs are decent, and you could see that Pokémon filling in a spot on your battle team, I would consider keeping it. If you purify it, it costs less resources to strengthen it. If you don’t, Shadow Pokémon are still powerful in their own right with the charged attack Frustration—they just cost more to power up.

There are no cons to leaving Shadow Pokémon as they are if you have enough resources, but purifying them gives you a chance to improve the Pokémon’s IVs while reducing the amount of resources you use to strengthen it.

To purify or not—it’s a pretty lukewarm decision to make, in my opinion. You don’t win a lot, but you also aren’t losing either. Hopefully this helps!

Process Post 9: SEO & Audience Growth

In State of Mobile 2022, Data.ai reports that each user spent on average 4.8 hours on their phones, which is one-third of the time we typically are awake. Reflecting on my own device usage, my screen time averaged about 10 hours and 50 minutes across all of my devices in the last week alone. Of course, this covers more than just my phone—so a more realistic look that I’m able to access is my social media usage, which has solely been on my phone. Just yesterday, I was guilty of being on TikTok for 9 hours and 7 minutes, which is so wild.

As somebody who clearly spends an unhealthy amount of time on social media, I believe SEO is crucial to reaching the customers, readers, subscribers, and users you want—whether you’re an individual or a business. Whoever your intended audience is, SEO is a force that captures leads towards what you are putting out in the digital world. In “15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO,” it states that SEO can boost the effectiveness of the user experience of a website, and can drive trust and credibility in an online space (Hollingsworth, 2021). Over time, trust and credibility can be built with consistent care for SEO, to keep brands relevant and more easily discoverable. When we better understand how our own audience is trying to find us and meet them where they are, we’ve already created a trail that they can start to follow.

SEO doesn’t just cover websites either—for example, Instagram users heavily rely on hashtags to extend the reach of their posts beyond those who already follow them. By making sure they use the right hashtags, users can reach more people who find their content relevant. When I used to post for a small Instagram shop I was running with my friend, a decent amount of time was spent testing combinations of hashtags, from ones that had less than 10,000 posts to ones that had over 300,000 posts in them, to see how popular and lesser-known hashtags would affect our post reach. The analytics we reflected on in our Professional account each week helped us see which posts were doing well, which hashtags were associated with it, and where our audience was coming from, so we could continue to target those people.

It’s not easy to build an audience from the ground up, but with consistent effort and reflection, it’s definitely possible. However, in our heavily saturated digital world, I’ve observed that it takes zeroing in on a niche, as well as being insanely active on multiple platforms, to really see growth. With the need for a considerable amount of effort, the communities that last online are likely founded on passion rather than a fleeting need to go viral.

References

Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 6). 15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved on March 18, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/